After 33 years of virtual one-man rule, the founder of the Sinclair enterprises relaxed his grip at the close of 1948. Record net earnings of $81 million climaxed Harry F. Sinclair's achievement. His was the most extensive petroleum complex to bear its founder's name. The post-war transition was complete. Refinery throughput averaged 258,500 barrels daily, crude oil production was nearly 40 million barrels a year at home and abroad. The pipelines, one of America's largest systems, carried ten million barrels volume per month. The domestic market area contained 85 percent of the U.S. population. Oil production in Venezuela and sales in the Americas and Europe attested to expanding international operations of an integrated structure. All this caused gross income in 1948 to cross half billion dollars a year for the first time at $636 million, or an average $2 million for each working day. On this peak Mr. Sinclair retired to California.

No one quite knew how the corporation had survived its first score of years, except on Mr. Sinclair's audacity. The financing, never adequate, during early 1920 had become precarious. A $50 million borrowing carried a 7½ percent interest rate. In addition, the proceeds were discounted by the bankers at 93½ percent, a shrinkage of $3.25 million. Yet the entire issue was redeemed within two years. Conversions to preferred stock at 104 retired about $20 million. The remainder was liquidated from proceeds of a new $50 million issue which bore a 7 percent coupon and a fifteen-year maturity. During the 1929-1935 depression, when many competitors succumbed, Sinclair doubled in size and squeezed $143 million from its capitalization. But the country boy financing of the first two decades left management a debt burden which was onerous for another quarter century.

Mr. Sinclair's vision became reality at the most unlikely moment--the nadir of the depression in 1932. From then on, at least, the roof was on the house. After 1933, earnings and dividends were maintained. Never for a moment during his professional life had Mr. Sinclair surrendered his independence or that of his companies. The legacy he left was $700 million of assets for 99,500 stockholders and an employee staff of 21,000: an enormous enterprise. But more than that, he bequeathed the tradition of fierce independence upon which his successors have relied and from which they, too, have drawn their corporate strength.

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